Everybody loves somebody sometime (especially himself)

As a comedy act, Martin & Lewis was considered by many critics to be on a par with Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers--yet others regarded them as no-talent saloon entertainers. Nevertheless, they skyrocketed from $200 per week to $20 million per year before their breakup. Biographer Arthur Marx points out that most entertainment duos eventually split up. In the case of the Martin & Lewis duo, Martin gradually came to resent playing stooge to Lewis, who gave himself the best laugh lines and subsequently began to believe his own publicity--that he was the second coming of Charlie Chaplin--and who wanted to write, direct, produce, lead the band compose the music, handle the camera, and even sing, despite a voice that one critic wrote was reminiscent of the "croaking of a parched parrot." Dean Martin's real name is Dino Crocetti, and he's the son of an Italian immigrant barber.^ His checkered career includes being a high school dropout, an amateur boxer, a bootlegger, and a gambling stickman. Jerry Lewis's real name is Joseph Levitch, and he's the son of small-time vaudevillians. There is hardly anyone who knows and understands the Hollywood scene better than Arthur Marx. In putting